


break my shackles to set me free

by lady_ragnell



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, F/M, Human Trafficking, Imprisonment, Minor Character Death, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 07:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16132067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Combeferre isn't frightened when he is taken--his superpowers will get him out of any kind of prison at all. However, when a young woman is thrown in with him to suppress his powers, he's forced to confront the possibility that he won't escape.





	break my shackles to set me free

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sweetpollyolliver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetpollyolliver/gifts).



> Written for **sweetpollyolliver** for a fic-for-donations post on tumblr. Title from "Run to You" by Pentatonix.
> 
> **Warnings:** as the tags state, imprisonment (with the intent to pass into human trafficking), abuse by the Thenardiers on a more-than-canon-typical basis, fear of death and violence, _actual_ death and violence (mild gore). This is not a light fic, but it does have a hopeful ending. If you want anything in the warnings explicated before you read, please ask!

Combeferre is going to be fine. He only has to wait until dark, until he's left alone, and he can get out of this, even if he's not sure where he is. He can beg a phone off someone, once he's free, and call Enjolras and Courfeyrac, and they'll come get him.

So when he's put, after a long drive and being shoved up a few flights of stairs, into an attic in a suburban house that's somewhat worse for the wear, and the door is locked behind his captors, he breathes a sigh of relief. It's bad, he won't pretend to himself that it's not, but all isn't lost. There's a barred window, but bars are only iron. There are cuffs holding him in place, but they're only metal too, and once he knows what kind, well—they don't have to be that any more.

All he has to do is wait until they aren't watching.

When the door opens, he's expecting a tray of food, and it comes, but it comes carried by a girl. She's a few years younger than he is, sharp-boned and sharp-eyed, hair scraped back in a careless bun, and she's turning around when the door slams and locks behind her. She gives Combeferre a fast glance that sizes him up and comes up with the unusual reaction that he's something to be afraid of, and then she puts down the tray and starts hammering on the door. “It works just as well from outside the room,” she shouts. “You can't keep me in here, you can't, you—please. He'll fucking kill me, he will.”

By the end, her voice has wound down like she expects that whoever it is who sent her in here has already left but she has to keep trying, and Combeferre clears his throat. “I won't. I'm no killer.”

She closes her eyes and rests her head against the door for a second before she surges into movement again, picking up the tray and setting it a wary distance from him, where he'll barely be able to reach it with the chain on his cuffs extended. “You will if you're smart.”

“I'm Combeferre.”

She stares at him. “You think your name is going to help? It just happens, making me sympathize with you doesn't make a fucking difference. It's all just where I'm standing.”

“I don't know what you mean. I just—we're trapped in here, so I wanted to introduce myself.” She must be a longer-term prisoner, but that's okay. He can get her out too, especially since she's not chained like he is. “What's your name?”

She sits down, against the door. She's still scared of him, more scared of him than she is of the man and woman who brought him here. What did they tell her about him? How long has she been here, to give her sympathy for them? Or are they kinder to her than to him? “What do you think is going to happen tonight?”

There are no cameras, no microphones. And she doesn't think they're listening. “I manipulate elements.” He nods at the window. “Iron into something more malleable—a gas, probably. Usually I choose nitrogen.” He nods at his cuffs. “Same for these. Once I know the elemental composition, I can change it. So I can get us both out.”

She looks stricken, arms hugging her knees. “You poor son of a bitch. You're not going anywhere tonight. Neither am I.”

“They can't fool physics or chemistry. I haven't found a chemical compound that I can't change, with some study.”

She tips her head back, and her eyes are glistening. “Okay. So try.”

Combeferre frowns. “They're still awake, I can hear them. We can't try now.”

“No, just … try changing something. The chain, just a link of it. Try and change it.”

One link can't hurt, if they're planning to come back tonight. It can easily be temporarily changed back. The links seem to be steel, so he searches for a tiny amount of iron and carbon, to change into something else—compounds work best turned into compounds, so perhaps water, hydrogen and oxygen.

The connection isn't there. He can't feel the molecules like he should be able to, and certainly can't manipulate them. There's only cold metal, even when he touches it, which is an aid he hasn't needed since he was thirteen and his powers were still new. He looks up at her, stomach pitching in sudden panic.

There's something that's almost a smile on her face, though it's nothing resembling happy. “See?” she says, and spreads her hands. “The chains and bars, they're for show. I'm the real prison.”

Combeferre shakes his head. “I can't feel it, any of it. How are you doing it?”

“I'm not doing it. It's what I _am_. No one in about fifty feet of me can access their powers.”

He feels sick. He could push down the nightmare of the day before, when he was sure that it would end in rescue, and Enjolras and Courfeyrac making wrathful plans to track down and prosecute the people who did this to him. Now that he's been trapped with a woman who can neutralize his powers without even thinking about it, he doesn't know what to do. “That's what you meant when you said it would work just as well on the other side of the door.”

“And that's what I meant when I said that you're going to kill me,” she agrees, and laughs. Wild, not amused.

“I'm not,” he says, but he hears how unsure his own voice is. He's not a killer, and he won't kill her, but he suddenly understands the worry. Of course she's terrified of him.

“You don't want to go where they're going to send you, either. Not with a power like that.”

“Then help me. You can turn your powers off, can't you?”

“No, I can't. They've been on since … I don't know since when. And they locked me in here, so I can't go far enough for you to use yours.”

Combeferre can get out someday. Apparently he's going to be sent elsewhere, and somewhere in that time, she'll be far enough away that his powers will work again, and he can save himself. It just might take a little longer.

The problem is that she's here, and she's been here for a while, from what he can tell. She deserves the chance to leave with him.

“We'll figure it out,” he promises, and makes a point of moving slowly when he gets up to get his tray of food. She still flinches. “Is it drugged?” he asks. He's hungry and thirsty, but he can hold out for a while if it is.

She frowns. “Maybe the juice. Not the food. I made that, and they didn't touch it.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Yes. Don't worry, I'm not dying on an empty stomach.”

“I'm not going to kill you.”

She just tips her head back against the door and doesn't say anything, no matter how many times he tries to start a conversation before, unwillingly, he falls asleep.

*

In the morning, Combeferre wakes to the sound of voices at the door, and it takes him a few moments to realize where he is, and why his perception of the world feels off. He opens his eyes, struggling to sit, wrists and shoulders twinging with the pain of being held in the same position for too long.

“I'll stay in the house, I promise,” she's saying. “You know I will, once I've said it. But what are you going to do with the next one if he kills me?”

“I'm not going to kill you,” Combeferre says, and he knows it's true but also knows that the words are losing their weight. He's going to have to convince her somehow, but just saying the words isn't going to help.

There's a sharp crack of laughter at the door. She's up on her feet, trying to push it open past the tiny crack in it, but someone is holding it fast. It sounds like the man from the day before, the one who'd knocked Combeferre out so he couldn't use his powers in the car. “See? He says he's not going to hurt you, and we can't trust you after last time, so here you stay while we're at work. We'll let you out later, don't worry.”

“And him? He's fucking chained up, he can't make it to the bathroom.”

Something gets tossed through the open door, and then a few more things. Water bottles. “Figure it out,” says the voice with cheerful malice, and then the door is slamming shut and a deadbolt is slotting into place.

For a few moments, there's echoing silence. “What happened last time?” Combeferre asks when he can't resist.

She shakes her head and picks up what landed on the floor. A bakery bag that seems to have some food in it, and a pair of water bottles. Breakfast, it seems. She turns over the water bottles, inspecting them for holes, and then leaves one and a pastry from the bakery bag where she left the tray last night. “Doesn't matter. Can't happen this time.”

Combeferre forces himself to his feet. His whole body is sore, head throbbing. He doesn't think he has a concussion, but he'd feel better if a doctor could check, or even Joly. He misses Joly fiercely, all of a sudden, the nervous ramble of worries he'd be letting out right now, from cleanliness to safety. “What's going to happen, then?”

“They're going to sell you,” she says, matter of fact in a way that chills him. “Elemental manipulation? Someone who could turn hydrogen into gold? Uranium? Diamonds? Oil? They'll be rich.”

“They can't force me to use my powers,” he says, and he's not sure if he's trying to comfort her or himself. “What will they do then?”

She sits back down and takes a couple bites of her pastry. “Fuck,” she finally says, after enough time that he's surprised to get an answer at all. “What do you think?”

Combeferre can't bring himself to talk after that.

*

There's rustling in the hallway a few hours later, and across the room, the woman sits up straight. She'd been reading a magazine out of a box in the attic, and when he'd asked for one, she'd thrown it to him. It's an outdated news magazine, musty and yellow, but he reads every word of it carefully, until the noise and her reaction distract him.

“Éponine?” whispers a voice on the other side of the door, and she throws him an unreadable look before turning. “Are you in there?”

“You shouldn't have come up,” she says.

“They shouldn't have put you in there. Are you … has he hurt you? I heard you last night.”

If everyone in this nightmare of a house keeps thinking that he's going to hurt her, he's going to hate himself within a week, if they keep him that long. He's already flinching at the thought, and at the look Éponine—he assumes that's her name—gives him over her shoulder. “No. He says he won't, but sometimes people do things to keep themselves safe. Is ...” She looks at him again, and sets her jaw. “Is he in his room, down there?”

A pause. “Yes. He's not happy.”

“Nobody is, today.” Her voice softens, away from the too-flat tone she's been using whenever she isn't talking to their captors. “Keep your head down. And tell him the same. You know the plan.”

“No.”

“You know it. You'll do it. If you have to. Shit.” She leans her head against the door. “I'm sorry.”

“I know.” The voice on the other side of the door sounds young, and she's wavering whenever she gets above a whisper. “Can I get you anything? I don't have the keys, but there's a little space under the door.”

Combeferre eyes it, and Éponine is doing the same. It's only a little space, not even tall enough to get a phone through. He'd give anything for a phone. Emergency services don't always come for violations against supers, but he has a few numbers memorized. “Bobby pins,” he says, before he can think whether it's smart to intrude on their conversation or not. “They aren't the best lockpicks, but they'll help.”

“Éponine?”

Éponine turns and looks at him, at his cuffs, at the cardboard boxes in the attic that could be filled with anything, at the door that leads to a bathroom, as he discovered when she skirted around his range of motion and disappeared into it for a few minutes. He needs to visit it, but hasn't had the courage to ask her if she has a way of helping him yet. “Bobby pins,” she confirms. “And paper.”

“A pencil won't fit.”

“Paper is a good start. If they have you make dinner tonight, you can smuggle us a writing utensil.”

“I can't get a message out.”

“I know. I just want to be able to write.” Éponine taps a few times on the door, something that sounds like a well-known pattern, though he doesn't think it's Morse code. “Be smart. Be brave. And don't let him do anything stupid.”

There's no answer. Instead, the shuffling travels down the hallway, and Éponine relaxes, still resting against the door. Combeferre doesn't ask her any of the questions swirling in his mind, not yet. He has a feeling that she's only going to have patience for so many, and that now isn't the time to try. He can try to put some of the puzzles together on his own. In the meantime, he rations himself a few sips of water.

It doesn't take long for the footsteps to return, and then there's a few sheets of paper and a small mass of bobby pins being shoved under the door. “Don't let him out if he's going to hurt you,” says the whisper.

“Let me worry about myself. Go take care of him. And if they're watching you make dinner, don't risk anything.”

“No risks.” That's both a promise and a request, and the footsteps are going away again.

Combeferre waits until Éponine turns around, and tries to make his first question a question and not a demand, or even a request. “Are you going to let me out?”

There's something that's almost a smile on her face. “You ask for bobby pins to use as lockpicks and don't know how to use them?”

“Not well enough. I can try, but it will be faster if you actually know.” He makes himself shrug, tries to look as harmless as he can. She won't believe him, not yet, but he has to keep trying. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

After a few seconds of scrutiny, she picks up a few bobby pins and comes over to him. Combeferre makes a point of not moving. She makes a point of not touching him, just working the pins into the lock of his cuffs, wiggling until she finds the catch for them. Her hair, loose of its bun, hides her face. It takes ten minutes of her steadily cursing under her breath, and she bends two of the pins past use, but the cuffs click, and he can shake them off.

He expects her to back off as soon as he's free, but she doesn't, just moves far enough to let him by. “Thank you,” he says, and goes to the bathroom. It's stocked, but there's nothing sharp, nothing helpful. He's not the first one they've taken.

Of course he's not. Éponine is here, and whoever that was on the other side of the door.

When he comes out of the bathroom, she's sitting against the door again.

“When will they be back?” he asks.

She shrugs. “Too soon.”

*

It's an old house, with thin walls. He can hear them come home, some hours later. Éponine doesn't move. She's still reading a magazine, a different one this time, from the box of them. Combeferre wonders whose they are, but it's another unimportant question, and he has hundreds of others.

“They said they would let you out when they came home,” he says, testing.

Éponine looks up at him briefly, then back to her magazine. “They were probably lying. I don't think I'm getting out until you get out. At some point they realized that I'm not the only one who can cook and keep the house running, and that I'm more of a flight risk than … than her.”

“I don't think I'm the one she needs protection from,” Combeferre points out, and when she scowls he sighs with impatience. “If we're going to get out, you need to trust me at least a little.”

That startles her into looking up from her magazine completely, meeting his eyes with her mouth jarred open with shock. “We? Nobody is going anywhere. They've trapped us, and even if you came up with some heroic plan, I'm not leaving without them, and four of us aren't going to get out of here. Not with my powers.”

“Éponine—”

“Don't use my name, and don't talk about escaping when they're in the house.” She shakes her head. “Don't talk about escaping at all.”

“They can't hear us up here. Even if they had powers that would let them, you stop that.”

She looks back at her magazine. “They always know anyway.”

That's the end of the conversation until dinner arrives, just when Combeferre's stomach starts growling. He goes back to where he's supposed to be, arranges his hands in his lap with the cuffs around them loosely, and counts on his captors to be too lazy to check. Since Éponine doesn't seem bothered, he assumes she agrees. She stands up when the deadbolt clicks, and stands at the door, automatically holds her hands out for a tray.

It's the woman this time. Combeferre is almost sure she's the one who saw him using his powers, because she's the one who asked for help and got him into an alley.

“You said you'd let me out,” says Éponine. “They have school work, I have to help them. There's a state inspection in two weeks and they're behind.”

He has a better view of the woman than he did the man, and he recognizes the shape of her mouth and chin, the way she tilts her head, and his stomach lurches. They aren't Éponine's captors, they're her family, and that makes it all worse. For him, and for her, and for the others in the house—her siblings, from how she's talking. The girl from earlier, anyway, is too old to be her daughter. “You don't need to worry about it,” she finally says, sounding bored. “You just keep him nice and safe in here.”

The door shuts, and Éponine flinches out of the way of it before it knocks her tray to the ground. It looks like there are mashed potatoes, and plastic spoons to eat it with, along with a few other things, and he has some hope that Éponine's sister, if that's who she is, smuggled them something helpful.

“Are they your siblings?” he asks when the footsteps recede far enough down the hall. There's not much point in not being nosy, not with what he thinks he knows. “The ones whose names you won't tell me?”

“That's not the right question. You should be asking if the people keeping you locked up are my parents. They are. You're not the first.”

“But they've never locked you up before.”

“No. They haven't.” She starts digging through the potatoes with a spoon, and comes up with a ballpoint pen. Once that's safe, she hands him his share of the food, and what looks like some of hers too. He decides not to mention it. If he were her, he'd be feeling guilty too. He hopes she's guilty. Any hopes he has of getting out depend on her being a good enough person to feel guilty, and if she loves her siblings enough to worry about them when she thinks he's going to kill her, chances are good.

“What are you going to do with the pen? I'm glad you have a chance to write, if that's what you want, but is it for entertainment, or something else?”

Éponine turns away from the food to frown at him. “It's so I can write notes. They can't get out of the house, but I can write to them, anyway, whatever I don't have time to say.”

“Do you still think I'm going to kill you?”

“I don't know.” She frowns at the floor. “Probably not. But something is wrong, more wrong than usual, and I don't like what that means for me.”

The food is good, and Combeferre eats. Courfeyrac and Enjolras would tell him to be practical and keep his strength up, and they would be right to. Joly would tell him to make sure the food wasn't poisoned or drugged, but Éponine is eating it without seeming to worry, so Combeferre tries to follow suit. “I don't like it either,” he finally says. “But that's why you have to help me.”

“I can't.”

And then she's up and slamming herself into the bathroom, pen and paper with her, and Combeferre doesn't dare pace in case her parents hear the creaking of the floor, so he stays where he is and tries to think of a way out.

*

Combeferre can't sleep. His panic should be exhausting him, but it's offset by the fact that he can't move, or do anything much. His brain and his body are both underused, and it means that he's left staring at the cobwebs on the attic ceiling and listening to Éponine breathe on the floor on the other side of the room.

She's not asleep either. She left the bathroom eventually, folded paper tucked into her pockets and the pen stuck through her bun, and once she turned the light out she's been tossing and turning on the few blankets she decided to take from his cot when he offered, breathing too irregular for her to be asleep.

“Has anyone ever trained your powers?” he finally asks.

There's a long silence, and he wonders if she's going to pretend to be asleep. “They don't need training. They're just _there_. I didn't even know until my—my brother went out with my parents without me one day, and they realized he had powers. And then it was only so long before they figured out it was me stopping him from using them in the house.” Éponine shifts. “And they haven't let him get too far from me ever since.”

“What can he do?”

“Change his size. We don't know how far.”

“And your sister? If two children in a family have powers, chances are the third does too.”

“As soon as she figured that out she refused to ever leave my range. Says she doesn't want to know. What does this have to do with me training my powers? I don't want to get better at this. God, what they would do, if I did … I don't need training.”

“I mean to turn them off.”

A long silence. Combeferre turns until he can see the shape of her in the dark, and thinks she's propped up on her elbows. He can't tell if she's looking his way or not. “I can't. As far as I know they're on all the time. When I'm asleep, when I'm sick, when I'm hurt.”

Combeferre tries not to get his hopes up. They're in a bad situation for learning, and if she's already this hopeless she might not try. Still, it's a better avenue than anything else he's come up with, and it's one where he already knows something, having had training himself and having helped with some of his friends, helping Jehan understand weather models and listening to Cosette tease out the ethics of her gift for making people do what she asks them to do. “There's not a power out there that can't be turned off,” he says, and listens for her sharp intake of breath. “You're proof of that. If you can shut other people's powers down, you can shut your own down. They're just biological processes, and that goes for you too.”

“Not if I don't know what I'm doing.”

“You can learn. If you want to.”

She's going to say no. Whatever her life has been, it can't have been good, and she has no reason to believe him. He expects freezing silence. Instead, she answers. “Go to sleep. We can't do anything tonight either way.”

His heart is in his throat. “But you'll try.”

“Sleep, Combeferre.”

It's the first time she's said his name. That isn't important, but he thinks about it anyway, while he tries to force himself to sleep.

It doesn't work, and he thinks she's still awake too, but he has training methods to consider, and she has plenty on her mind too. He won't interrupt her with more questions.

*

“How far does your range go?” he asks the next day, sitting cross-legged on the floor. They've had their morning meal and taunts from Éponine's father, and a whispered visit from her sister while Combeferre shut himself in the bathroom so he couldn't eavesdrop again, and now they're alone, because Éponine insisted that her siblings' school work still matters.

“I told you. About fifty feet, I think.”

Combeferre shakes his head. “No. You need to know, and I don't care if it's exact distances. You just need to know where your sphere of influence stops. And if it's a sphere, or a cube, or something else.”

She scowls at him, but she closes her eyes, tilting her head like she's listening for something. It's only about five seconds before she shakes her head and opens her eyes. “This is stupid. It's far enough to ruin our chances. What more do you want?”

“If you know more about it, your chances of controlling it go up. And if you can control it, you can stop it.”

“This is going to hurt you, when it doesn't work,” she points out. “Nothing changes for me, but it's your last hope unless you think whoever comes for you isn't going to be prepared for you. Do you really want to lose it?”

Combeferre considers the question honestly, even though it's the last thing he wants to think about. Éponine's parents are monsters, but they aren't effective kidnappers without her help. If they were, Éponine's sister wouldn't have been able to deliver them paper, bobby pins, a writing utensil in the food. If they're not very competent, chances are whoever they're giving him to—selling him to—won't be either, but he doesn't want to take that chance. “I think you're too smart not to manage it once you realize it's possible. I hope it's in time for me. If not, it might be in time for the next person. Or your brother.”

“Fuck you,” she says, and closes her eyes. “Don't talk,” she adds a minute later.

Combeferre stays quiet, even though every day that passes in the attic makes him more and more restless. He never realized how much he walked—to see his friends, to get to classes and meetings, just pacing his apartment—until the opportunity has been taken from him. The silence makes it worse. He doesn't have music, or the sounds of his friends chatting, or even familiar neighborhood noises.

But if Éponine needs silence to work, he'll give it to her.

“It's a fucking sphere,” she says what must be an hour later, abruptly moving, standing up and moving a few steps in one direction, stopping when she turns around like she's trying to stop herself pacing. “And I still can't make it go away.”

“That's a good beginning,” he offers, but she's ignoring him again, and he knows by now that he can't push her too hard.

*

That night, after a meal that doesn't come with any particular gifts from Éponine's sister, Combeferre watches Éponine set up her sleeping space again. It's just blankets on a wooden floor, and he looks from her to his cot. It's not much, but she won't get splinters from it. “Swap beds?” he offers.

She looks up from fussing with the folds of a blanket, incredulous. “Do you think we're friends?”

“No. I think you're probably sore after a few nights on the floor and that you've been locked up by your parents and deserve some comfort.” He considers his own reasons. He has no reason to be anything but honest with Éponine, as far as she lets him. Even if she's the one truly keeping him from leaving, she's as much a victim in all this as he is. “And, frankly, the better you sleep, the better control you'll have over your powers, as a general rule.”

Éponine watches him for a few seconds, gauging his honesty, before she nods. “If you try to climb in with me I will rip your ear off.”

“I wouldn't,” he promises, but she thinks he'll kill her to get free, so she probably doesn't trust that either. He can't blame her. “I'll shut myself in the bathroom if you want. The door creaks, so you could hear it if I decided to do something.”

She frowns at him. “No. I might need to go in the night. Just … across the room.”

Combeferre nods and when she picks up her blankets, takes his own off the bed. He'd be happy to use the ones she's been using, but if she wants to keep them, he's going to keep his. They pass each other, him moving somewhere he could theoretically be if he were still cuffed, her going to the bed. “Any more luck?” he asks while he puts his blankets down, because he can't help it. “All powers are different, but visualizations tend to help for everyone. I'm lucky to have molecular structure to imagine, but you can come up with something of your own.”

She snorts. “Oh, I can, can I? Nice to know.” She sits on the bed. It's still a little early to sleep, but they're running out of magazines and there's no way of getting more reading material. The monotony is wearing on him more with every passing hour. “Look, knowing the shape and about how far it goes is farther than I've ever gotten before. I still don't think I'll have the control by the time it's going to make a difference to you, but … I guess it's something.”

Combeferre swallows, and thinks about Feuilly. He got his powers late, and worked every day on a dozen different strategies to get control. It took more than a few days, and he didn't have time to wear himself into a rut of believing that his powers don't work. “It's definitely something,” he says. “For the next one, if not me.”

“I don't understand you,” she says, frustrated, and this time he's the one who lets the silence creep in, because he doesn't know what to say in response.

They're both bored and restless that night, but Combeferre doesn't try to start a conversation this time. If he does, he's going to talk about Feuilly. He's going to talk about Bossuet, who tested positive for powers but has no idea what they are, and Marius, who can pick up any language within hours of immersion but can't be tactful in any, and all the rest of his friends, and he can't bear to think about them right now. It's possible that his only hope of seeing them again rests on Éponine's shoulders.

A few times in the night, he feels the air change, like something is happening, but he doesn't know if it's her experimenting or if it's just a shift in the weather.

Combeferre dozes more than he sleeps, waking up from dreams that don't have time to turn into nightmares to the sound of Éponine's deep breathing from the cot. She might be asleep, or might be meditating. He doesn't ask which.

*

“I heard him on the phone last night,” says Éponine's sister the next day, some time after the parents went to work. Combeferre is on top of his blankets, since he hasn't bothered to get up. He knows it's not good for him, but it's all he can do nonetheless. “He said ...”

Combeferre waits, and at the keyhole, so does Éponine. When no response comes, Éponine taps on the door. “What did he say?”

“You can come pick them up on Friday,” says Éponine's sister, trailing off into a whisper.

Éponine, on the other hand, answers in something near a shout. “Them?”

He wants so badly to be shocked and appalled, but it makes a sickening amount of sense. He's a valuable asset for anyone who would want to take him, but the problem is controlling him. If he's sold with a means of keeping him from using his powers unsupervised, it must double his value. If he's sold with a hostage, someone he doesn't want to see hurt, he'll be more likely to do what they want when he's out of her range, and his value grows again.

With all of that, for the right criminal organization, he's worth a fortune. He's worth enough for a greedy pair to retire from a business they might get caught in, and to move somewhere they can't be extradited from, too. He'll make them rich, if they can sell him with a way to control his powers, and Éponine is the only way Combeferre has ever seen.

They're terrible parents. Of course they would sink this low.

“That's why you're in here with me,” he says as gently as she can, and she whips around to stare at him, eyes wide and glistening. She looks scared like she hasn't since that first night. “The price for both of us was better than the price for just me, and … well, you know what I can do. Together, we're probably worth millions.”

“Enough for them to retire, to leave,” she says, connecting the same dots he did, and then she turns back to the door. “You and Gav, what did they say about you? Are you … did they mention you?”

“'Them' could be any number of people,” says Combeferre. This is too urgent to care about interrupting, and Éponine must agree, if she let slip even a syllable of her brother's name.

“It's not me. I don't have any powers.” Her tone dares them to disagree. “And I don't think Gav's are the kind that people would want to buy.”

Combeferre has learned enough to know that any power can be exploited, and will be, out of the government's terror that someone with powers who isn't living with at least mild inconvenience would have too easy a time of taking over. Criminal organizations, the kind that would pay money for human beings instead of just exploiting their labor, disenfranchising them, or allowing discrimination against them, would have even less scruples. Éponine's sister might be safe, with no proven powers, but they would take the brother—someone who can be any size he wants can climb through key holes, bypass security, a hundred other things.

Éponine saves him from having to say any of that, her voice still urgent. “You need to get out, and get him out. You can call ...” Her voice drops off suddenly. Of course she wouldn't trust the police. And her siblings wouldn't either.

But he has other options. “I have a friend—I have his number memorized. If you get out, you can call him. He'll take care of you, especially if you tell him where I am.” And Enjolras knows their contacts in the police and with the government, people who won't just let Combeferre and Éponine slip through the cracks. “Éponine, can I use some of that paper?”

After a second, she nods, and he writes down Enjolras's name, number, and address, as well as his own name, and then he rips off that section of the paper and pushes it under the door. “Thank you,” says Éponine's sister.

“If you show him that sheet of paper, he'll recognize my handwriting, so you shouldn't have much trouble making him believe you.”

“Thank you,” she says again, and then in a rush, “But I don't think we can get out.”

Combeferre tries to keep his voice calm. “You probably can't, not yet. But if the worst happens and they get Éponine and I away on Friday, you move as soon as she's out of range. Your brother will be able to get himself out of his room, and out of the house, and the two of you can run. Did they say anything else on the phone that you could hear?”

“Nothing I could hear. I'm sorry.”

“It's fine, you're fine, we know more than we did before,” says Éponine. “If you hear anything else, tell us if you can, okay? And in the meantime, act like everything is normal.”

“I'll try.”

“For now, go down there and tell him what's going on, and to be ready. He needs to know. And we need to talk.”

“Okay. I'll come back later with whatever news he has,” she says, and then there's the now-familiar sound of her traveling away, down the hallway.

Combeferre waits until she's probably out of earshot. “It's Wednesday.” Two days to come up with a plan. It's not much. Éponine nods like she's thinking the same thing. “The ideal solution is still you learning to turn off your powers. The second that's done, I can get you and your siblings out, and to safety soon after.”

“We don't have time for ideal. We have other options, and the more time—”

“The easy solution is for one of us to kill the other,” he continues, so he doesn't have to listen to her say it. “If you kill me, it removes your parents' leverage to sell you, so you have some time. I doubt they'll be happy, and they'll take it out on you and your siblings, but you'd all be together and have time to make a plan.”

“And if you kill me, you and my siblings get out with no trouble. If you'd … if you'd take them, that is.”

Combeferre flinches. “Of course I would. I wouldn't leave children behind in a house like this. But they're going to need you, when all of this is over. I'm not going to leave them without you. I'd never forgive myself.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“We can try to get a message out, see if your sister will steal a phone from your parents, if she can, or we can write a message and put it in the attic window, though if the neighbors haven't noticed bars chances are they won't notice that either.” Combeferre sighs. “But our best bet is still you learning to control your powers enough to drop them. Before Friday.”

“I can't.”

Combeferre thinks about consequences. He thinks about disappearing into some kind of underground and his friends never knowing why. He thinks about Éponine disappearing, and what's likely to happen to her sister and brother. He thinks about the ripples from one or the other of them dying. “You have to.”

Éponine leans her head against the door. “I know.”

*

Éponine's father is the one who brings them dinner that night. Éponine stands to meet him at the door after a frustrating afternoon of trying to control her powers, interrupted twice by her sister, who doesn't like her chances of getting access to a phone. The last time, Éponine forgets herself and calls her Azelma, and that alone is enough to tell Combeferre how much hope she has.

“When are you letting me out?” she asks her father as soon as the door opens, even as she reaches out for the tray.

“When I'm ready to,” he says.

“You can't keep Gav locked in his room forever, and someone is going to notice that neither of them is leaving the house eventually.”

“Will they?” Combeferre, back where he would be if the cuffs were still working, even though her parents must suspect from the lack of terrible smells that he's free, can only catch a glimpse of his face. He's grinning. “You let me worry about that. You're doing just fine up here, seems like.”

“You're really not going to let me out, are you?” she asks, voice wavering, and Combeferre's stomach sinks. “I'm never getting out. Wherever he's going, I'm going too. Isn't that right?”

“I don't think you need to worry about that.”

“Please. They need me. Please just tell me.”

Her father opens the door just far enough to kiss her on the forehead, a mockery of paternal affection. “They're going to be just fine. Living life the way it should be lived.”

“Without me,” she says, and steps back. The dishes are rattling on the tray. When she speaks again, her voice breaks. “Dad, please.”

The door shuts, and Combeferre hopes it's because Éponine's father has even a glimmer of shame left over making his daughter beg not to be sold off so he can live a more comfortable life. He hopes this decision costs him and his wife in guilt. But the steps retreating down the hall don't seem any slower than usual, and there aren't comforting words, excuses, not even an insincere apology.

Éponine crouches and puts the tray on the floor with an abrupt bang, and Combeferre sits up, halfway to standing to go over to her. “Don't,” she says, and he sits back again. “Fuck. I know that was stupid, but I had to try.”

“I don't blame you. And it's not like you ruined a plan that depends on secrecy.” He dares to inch in her direction, not getting off the floor, and she only looks at him sidelong. “Do you mind if I get my dinner? I'm hungry.”

“Fine. Whatever.” She sits back, looks at him with her jaw set, but she's shaken, even if she's trying not to be.

Combeferre doesn't know what to say. Cosette would have some comfort to give, just the right soft words. Courfeyrac would have a speech ready, Bahorel fiery threatening words, Joly and Bossuet something to cheer her up. Even Grantaire would be chattering on until she forgot to be heartsick. He's the wrong one to be here with her, but he's the only one she's got. He stands up and sits down next to her, picking up a plate off the tray. “You deserve better from him,” he says. It's inadequate, but it's a start. “From everything, really.”

“It doesn't matter what I deserve. What I have is a father who is going to _sell me_ , and I think maybe the worst part is that I'm just an extra, and how fucked up is that, that I'd rather be shipped off on my own merits?”

It's a mess, but he's not going to blame her for any of her reactions. “I'm sorry.” In the end, it's all there is to say, because he is. He's sorry in the way anyone is when giving condolences, and he's sorry for existing and using his powers where someone dangerous could see, and for a hundred other things too.

He doesn't know what he expects. Cursing, maybe. Mockery. She has no reason to accept any of his clumsy attempts at comfort. But she must be rubbed too raw to hide her reaction, because her face crumples and then she's crying. She's quiet, but it looks like it hurts her.

Combeferre doesn't dare touch her. He stays where he is, and tries to think of a platitude that won't ring false. “I'm here,” he finally says. Neither of them want him to be, but it's true.

They stay there, sitting on the floor with dinner cooling between them, for longer than he thinks to keep track of. Éponine cries until there are no more tears, just her breath shaking while she sits and refuses to sob. Combeferre stays, because she deserves that from someone. He thinks of learning how to help people through panic attacks, and thinks he could talk about breathing and grounding but that she'd punch him as likely as not for it.

“We should eat,” she finally says, voice wrecked and stuffy. “No use starving.”

“Of course. Do you need to wash your face or something first?”

Éponine shakes her head, briskly wiping her face with her hands, though it doesn't seem to do much good. “I'll have a hell of a headache later, but I need some food.”

They eat on the floor, without retreating to their separate corners like they usually do, and Combeferre cleans up afterwards, to let her have a little privacy. She washes her face and has some water, and comes out of the bathroom looking pale and shaky but determined. “Do you have the energy to practice?” he asks.

“No. But I'm going to do it anyway.”

She does, sitting cross-legged on the bed in silence while Combeferre rereads a magazine. A few times, he feels a change, like maybe he can feel the edges of the structure of the world like he should be able to, but he doesn't say anything out loud in case it breaks her concentration.

She falls asleep sitting up, and Combeferre wants to cover her with a blanket, but he thinks she would wake up right away and that it wouldn't be a pleasant awakening, so he retreats to the nest on the other end of the attic and tries to sleep himself.

*

“I want to talk to him,” Azelma says the next afternoon, and Combeferre looks up in shock from the barred window, where he's been staring out hoping for a miracle. Thursday is passing too fast, and Éponine is alternating pacing and meditating, the flickers of success not enough to give him time to get a grip on his powers. There are flickers, though, and he thinks he's not the only one feeling them. Éponine doesn't look more hopeful, but she still seems determined.

“What about?” she asks now, backing up a step from where she's been pressed up against the door and whispering for a few minutes. They seem concerned about their brother, worried he's planning something without them. If anyone can get out of the locked and barred house without powers, he can, they're sure, and Azelma has given him Enjolras's number too.

“If I wanted to talk to you about it, I would be talking.”

Azelma usually sounds scared and sad and a hundred other things she has the right to feel, but that waspish tone reminds him that she's Éponine's sister. Combeferre looks at Éponine to find her scowling but moving away from the door. “Fine. Going to the bathroom. Tell your secrets.”

Combeferre approaches the door. “I'm here.”

The bathroom door slams, and he can hear Azelma exhale. “Are you going to be able to do it? Get out tomorrow before they take you? Do you think she can do it?”

“I don't know.” He owes them both honesty. “One in three chance, I think. She's trying as hard as she can, but this is a horrible situation to learn control in, and I'm feeling the stress too, which means I can help less.” And then, because Éponine clearly loves her siblings more than anything else in the world and he owes them what help he can give, too, he continues: “I know you can't get a phone right now. That's fine. But if you can, in a week or a year, call the number. He'll answer.” As long as Combeferre is missing, Enjolras won't change his number.

“If you can't stop it … you'll take care of her, right?”

She knows what she's asking. She knows that they're going to be used against each other, and that every time he stops a threat to Éponine he'll be doing something terrible. “I'll do my best.” It's all he can promise. “But I hope it won't be necessary.”

“We're coming for you. Whatever powers I end up with, once she's gone, we're coming for you.”

Combeferre hates Éponine's parents more than anyone else he's met in his life. They've raised determined, fierce children who love each other and are willing to make sacrifices in the name of the greatest good a situation will allow them, and they've done it through breaking them down. “Thank you. I'll keep her safe until you come.”

“Thank you. For not killing her, I mean.”

Éponine chooses that moment to come out of the bathroom, and her expression makes it clear she's been listening to every word she could catch. Combeferre catches her eye when he answers. “I won't ever.”

“That's enough out of you two,” says Éponine. “I have to practice, and Azelma, you have dinner to make. You have enough food in the house, right? We haven't been shopping this week.”

“Enough to make one of your favorites for dinner tonight.”

Some kind of last supper for the deceased, he suspects, but Éponine is smiling, so he doesn't bother with bitterness. “Then go make it. Maybe we can even have it as a celebration dinner somewhere.”

Her expression is less hopeful than her voice, but Combeferre doesn't mention that.

*

The afternoon and the evening are quiet. Éponine's mother delivers the meal this time, and she doesn't taunt like her father, but she's still bored by the whole thing, like trapping her own child in her attic is an inconvenience at worst. Éponine tries to talk to her just like she did to her father, asking what her plans are for her siblings, who will take care of them, who will take care of the house and the food and everything else to keep up appearances.

Éponine's mother's “We'll be able to pay for a nanny” is crueler than anything else she could have said.

When she's gone, Éponine doesn't cry. She eats her dinner while Combeferre eats his and then goes to sit on the bed, though she doesn't start meditating. She's staring at him instead, like he's got answers he hasn't given her yet.

Instead of answers, he finds himself with a question. “Do you want me to leave them alive?”

Somehow, she knows what he means. “You're no killer. And there's no way of knowing if you'll even be able to.”

Combeferre thinks he could be a killer, for them. For his sake, for Éponine's, for Azelma's and their brother's, whose full name he still doesn't know. Their parents are monsters, and Combeferre doubts he would feel a flicker of guilt for them, and then only for the sake of their children. The human traffickers paying money for human beings deserve even less consideration. “Of course I'll be able to. You're going to have it under control. And that's not what I asked. Do you want them alive?”

“No.” She covers her face with her hands. “Fuck. What kind of person does that make me?”

“A smart one. They've done horrible things.”

“Don't do it in cold blood,” she says, muffled into her palms. “Just … if you have to. I won't mind.”

After a second's hesitation, he stands up and crosses to her side of the attic, and sits next to the bed. She doesn't look up. “If you can do it tonight, I probably won't have to.”

“I'm trying. Do you think I'm not?”

“I know you are. That wasn't pressure, or not much anyway. Just information. If you want them alive, tonight is the time. Tomorrow we might not have the luxury.”

“And if I can't do it tomorrow?”

“Then your parents don't matter until we track them down to make sure we don't have to save your siblings, and all we have to worry about is whoever's holding us.”

Éponine flickers a glance at him, assessing. “You acted so horrified when I said you'd kill me, and here you are, talking like that.”

“You haven't done anything to me. They have. And this ...” It's hard to know how to say it. His life is aimed towards making the world a little better, a little more free. His best friends are Enjolras, who believes fiercely in the glory of the future even if he fears that the good parts are going to be beyond their lifespans, and Courfeyrac, who has a smile for everyone but would do anything to make Enjolras's better world come a little sooner. Combeferre would call himself an idealist, if it didn't suggest naivete, but he's practical. A better future isn't going to come just by him waiting for it. “Disappearing isn't going to serve a purpose. Showing mercy isn't going to serve a purpose. Not right now. I'll feel like a monster later, but I probably won't regret it either.”

“You shouldn't.” She draws her knees up. “You barely know me.”

“I know. But I'm not going to just leave you here.”

“I'm not going to let you down.”

“I know you won't.” He shifts. “So I should probably leave you to practice.”

Her hand shoots out fast enough to make him flinch, and she grips his wrist. “Just … stay, okay?”

Combeferre does, and Éponine sits there and meditates and never takes her hand off his arm. He's bored, at first, but he meditates too, and wonders if he's thinking about the molecules around him or if he can feel them, sometimes, when she's closer to control. He thinks about the metal locks on the door, how easy it is to turn iron and carbon into nitrogen and oxygen. He thinks about how humans are made of iron and carbon too.

Eventually, he sleeps, uneasy, head lolling against the bed, and Éponine never lets go of him.

*

Combeferre wakes to the sound of the lock clicking, and by the time he's blinked himself awake, Éponine's parents are already in the room. It's early, barely any light at all clearing the bars in the window, and Éponine's hand is still a band around his wrist. Her parents notice. Of course they do. He moves just enough to tap a finger against her arm, which brings her to full awareness with no space in between.

“She picked the lock, I suppose,” says Éponine's father, nodding at the cuffs against the wall. “We guessed, but you've been more careful before.”

“No point with pretense. You're selling us today.” Combeferre wants to get up, get between them and Éponine, but it's a stupid thought. He stays where he is instead.

Éponine's mother is staring around the attic with her lips pursed like she's looking for her grandmother's wedding china, not looking at a place where she's held her own daughter for a week now. Her father just shrugs, philosophical. “A man does what he has to.”

“Are you here to get us, or can I tell you to fuck off long enough to wash up and get a drink of water?” Éponine asks, her voice rasping with sleep.

Éponine's father laughs like that's a joke, like he just got her out of bed to leave for a family trip. “Sure, sure, just don't take too long. Got to get an early start.”

Combeferre has a lightning-quick moment of hearing the conversation in Grantaire and Musichetta's voices, like it's the morning after too many drinks and Grantaire slept on someone's couch and Musichetta is there to pick him up and take him home in the morning, and he suddenly misses both of them so fiercely it aches. He's not close to either of them the way he is to some of his other friends, but they are still his friends, and he's not going to see them again until Éponine can give him a door back to his life.

“I've packed some of your clothes,” says Éponine's mother, which only compounds the illusion and the cruelty.

Combeferre wants to rip them apart, and surprises himself with the savagery of the emotion. He knew he hated them, knew he wouldn't hesitate to kill them if they got in the way of escape, but the _wanting_ to, that's different. He tries hard to believe in redemption, in the good of people, but this is too much, and too far. He forces his hands still, and his voice calm. “How long do we have to get ready?”

“Ten or twenty minutes,” Éponine's mother says with a shrug, and starts shepherding her husband out the door.

When it shuts, with them on the other side, Combeferre looks up at Éponine. She's staring at the door, stricken, but when he moves his head, she looks down at him. “You use the bathroom first, you're faster,” she says, and then on the heels of it, “Combeferre, I'm _sorry_.”

“You don't have anything to be sorry for. We can't choose our parents or our powers.” This might be easier if he could hate Éponine, put some of the blame on the person who's closest, who's going to be part of the prison he's going towards, but he knows she's just as trapped as he is.

“Doesn't matter. Get ready.”

They do it in silence. He knows enough by now to know that she prefers it, if there's nothing useful to say. He splashes water on his face, cleans his glasses, straightens some of the wrinkles out of his shirt even though it's dirty and ripe after so long wearing it, brushes his teeth as well as he can, and then leaves Éponine to do the same. She comes out of the bathroom with bobby pins in her hair, a gesture like she's hopeful they'll have a chance to pick a lock.

When the door opens again, they're standing together. Éponine's mother snorts at them and pulls out a pair of handcuffs, chains them together. They think he's going to try to run and leave her behind, but they're wrong. If he leaves alone, it's just going to be far enough to get reinforcements. He offers his hand, fingers spread, and after a hesitation, she takes it. Better to leave some slack in the handcuffs and keep their wrists from being rubbed raw. Éponine's mother snorts at the two of them and grips Éponine's other arm to pull them out of the room, to the hall where her father is waiting with that same too-smug grin.

Combeferre almost stumbles twice while they walk down the hall. Éponine is shorter than he is, and their steps take a while to sync up, especially since they're being towed along none-too-gently. Éponine's father is holding a taser, just waiting to prod them on if they don't move fast enough, and it makes it even harder to keep from tripping up or tripping Éponine up.

A floor down, he hears shouting. Azelma, he realizes a second later, yelling through tears, pounding on her bedroom door. They don't pass it, but she must be locked in, and she's yelling “Don't do this, you can't” before she gives in and just screams Éponine's name. There's a boy's voice too, Gav's, cursing a blue streak.

Combeferre looks at Éponine to find her white-faced, mouth pursed, eyes bright with tears. She's not going to give her parents the pleasure of her talking, begging, trying to give comfort or advice to run. He raises his voice instead, thinking of Éponine that first day when Azelma came, and the way she said “Remember the plan.” He never thought to ask her what it was. “Keep your heads down,” he calls, and hopes it reminds them.

Éponine's hand spasms around his, but he doesn't know if that's good or bad.

“You're an idiot,” says Éponine's father, sounding entertained.

Combeferre wants to say that as soon as Éponine is stuffed in a car and down the street, Gav will be able to get out of his room, if he can shrink. He can get Azelma out. They'll be contacting Enjolras within a day, and Combeferre and Éponine will be found. All they have to do is wait for the right moment. He's not going to tell Éponine's parents that, though. They might not have thought as far as their younger children. “Maybe,” he says instead. “But there are worse things to be.”

They're pulled away from the sounds of shouting, which abates into Azelma's sobs and Gav's now-quieter swearing after Combeferre's words, and downstairs into what must once have been a comfortable living room. Now everything is worn, from carpet to couch to television, and the whole place smells musty, even though it's messy enough to be lived-in.

Nothing looks like it belongs to Éponine or her siblings. No school books, no video games or signs of hobbies. Not even enough seats for a whole family of five. Combeferre and Éponine are shoved down on the couch and she perches on the edge of it like she can't bear to sit there while her parents withdraw a little to talk. They're quiet enough that he can't hear them, and it itches, that he doesn't know exactly what's happening.

“I'm trying,” Éponine whispers, choked. She still hasn't let go of his hand.

He holds on tighter, and wishes he was brave enough to say that she can take a break, that they can escape as easily in a week or a month. “Keep trying,” he says instead.

*

Someone knocks on the door maybe half an hour later, after they've been brought water and a snack, less solicitude and more, Combeferre suspects, to keep the merchandise healthy. Sometimes he can hear a thump from upstairs, where Azelma and Gav must be trying to get out and take action, and he's grateful even though Éponine tenses a little bit every time.

Éponine's father goes to answer the door and there's some chatter there before three men come in. They're the kind of criminals who wear suits, the kind who take themselves seriously, and judging by their scars, the kind who have seen fights. They look at Combeferre and Éponine like they're appraising jewelry, and their eyes linger on Éponine in ways that make Combeferre feel even more sick.

“He'll work for us?” asks the one that must be in charge.

“Given sufficient motivation.” Éponine's father jerks his head at her. “She'll do.”

And she will, to an extent. If he's taken past her range, he can take his captors and their measures to pieces if he needs to, but his range is what he can see. He couldn't stop a bullet from hitting Éponine, if she were on the other side of a door.

“And you're sure this will stay quiet? Your other children are in the house, you did say the younger one can shrink, and the older one, well—”

“We said we'd contact you as soon as we knew,” says Éponine's mother, and Éponine's hand goes white-knuckled in his. “She's stubborn about using her powers, though. Might not want to do much.”

He tilts his head at Éponine, and Combeferre itches for his powers, itches to get them all out and away from this conversation, from the horrible banality of it and the even worse implications underneath. “I'm sure we can convince her, if she's useful.”

“No,” says Éponine quietly, suddenly as steady as a rock, and then again, a little louder when a few of them glance at her: “No.”

Combeferre feels the decision as she makes it, and he doesn't make her drag him. She moves fluidly, picking up a heavy wooden footstool, and when one of the men comes to try to take it from her, she heaves it up with the strength of panic and hits him so hard that Combeferre can hear the crunch of wood and bone alike. The man staggers a few steps and drops like a stone, head a mess of blood.

Everything and everyone is moving, all of a sudden. The other two men are lunging for them, and a footstool can't do much about them. Éponine's mother is screaming something, maybe about blood on her floors, and her father is shouting, angry at Éponine as though he isn't the monster here. Combeferre ducks the swing of a fist and then the swing of a pistol turned into a blunt weapon—they don't want to shoot their assets and weren't smart enough to use tranquilizers—and follows Éponine's lead, because she's vicious and smart. This isn't her first fight, but he thinks this is more instinct than learned response.

They're handcuffed together. It makes it hard to dodge, and Combeferre has been in a fight or two, thanks to his hot-headed friends. He knows that in a fight at close quarters, dodging is half the battle. The best he can do is help Éponine dodge, even if it means taking a few blows himself. He's taller, larger. He can take it.

The next time the pistol comes at them, aiming for her face, Combeferre steps in the way and takes a blow to the collarbone that might crack it, and Éponine lets out a noise like it hit her anyway. Then she takes the footstool and aims it low, swinging it around Combeferre and catching their assailant below the belt, making him groan and back up a few steps.

Surely there are neighbors. This whole morning is a noisy mess, and he thinks he can hear Azelma screaming through the thin floor. If the walls are thin too, why hasn't anyone heard them?

Combeferre takes another blow while he's trying to think of a way out, this one to the temple. It leaves his ear ringing and something wet sliding down the side of his face, and Éponine is hitting someone else—her father, that last blow was her father joining the fight—while she asks if he's okay, and there's raw fear in her expression, the knowledge that they're overwhelmed, and then something shifts.

Hydrogen. Nitrogen. Oxygen.

The structure of the world comes rushing back to him like it never left, overwhelming him for a second, and then he reaches out and the handcuffs are only so much gas rejoining the atmosphere. Éponine gasps, and then her mother does, the only one not fighting, and Combeferre turns to the people who would do this to them, to anyone.

The first one Éponine hit is dead. If he leaves any of them alive, her parents included, either they'll be taken or put in jail. Her parents would concoct a story out of sheer spite, and the legal system likes listening to people without superpowers.

When Combeferre's powers manifested, the first thing he learned how to transmute was water. Anything dangerous, anything threatening, and he could make it water, the easiest and safest compound he could find, easier than turning compounds into a single safe element. He can make anything into water, after all that practice.

It doesn't take any effort at all to kill four people at once, to take the air in their lungs, some combination of oxygen and carbon dioxide while they're inhaling and exhaling, and turn it into water. They can't breathe, and it doesn't take long to kill someone who can't breathe. He should feel regret, no doubt, should be in an agony of indecision over letting them die at the last, but he doesn't bother paying attention to them. He turns to Éponine instead. “Is it just me, or will your brother will be able to get out of his room?”

She's staring at her parents. Their elemental composition suggests that they're at least almost dead, if not already so. “What?”

“Your siblings, Éponine. Can your brother get out now?”

“I don't know.” Her voice is colorless, and she's still staring. “I think … I don't know how I did it.”

“Whatever it is, it's still working. You go check on them. I'm going to ...” Five people dead. Four by his doing. Bodies are as bad as witnesses, but bodies are made of elements. There are stories they can tell when there are no bodies that they can't tell with them, ones that will get them out free. “I'm going to deal with this.”

“What did … I only saw them dying. I don't know what you did. Did it hurt?”

“I drowned them indoors. Some people say drowning is peaceful. Some people say it hurts. I'd say it's up to you.”

Éponine looks at the scattering of people on the floor, and something in her face firms. “I hope it hurt.”

Her hands are shaking. Combeferre thinks maybe his are too. “Me too.”

“Gavroche,” she says, shaking her head a few times. “I think he can use his powers, but I don't think he knows it yet.”

“Go. I have things here. And then we need to call the police.” She frowns, but he just shakes his head. “Trust me. We need to call the police. There won't be anything to find.”

Éponine gives him a look he has no idea how to read and goes up the stairs at a run, calling Azelma's name and Gavroche's—that must be Gav's full name, but they're past all thought of her not trusting him now, at least for the moment.

Combeferre looks at the bodies, and thinks about the composition of the human body. Oxygen can be left as it is. Most other things can't, at least not in their current form.

Iron to hydrogen. Potassium to nitrogen. Combeferre dissolves them piece by piece and is terrified for the first time by how easy it is to erase five people from existence. Within a minute, all they are is air, and he only pauses long enough to get a set of car keys out of the pockets of one of the men who were going to buy him before he finishes all of them, clothes and blood and all.

Within a minute, there are steps on the stairs, three sets warily walking down. The first is a boy of maybe twelve, who stops when he sees Combeferre, frowning with his arms crossed, and he's followed by a girl of maybe sixteen with redder hair than Éponine's. She puts her hand on her brother's shoulder and pushes him a little, and then looks up and meets Combeferre's eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Not yet. But I will be.” Gavroche finally starts moving again, and they clear the stairs, leaving Éponine to come down after them. She's been in her room, because there's a phone in her hand, and her wallet too. “We need to go. I need to get rid of their car, though.”

“What are we doing?” Éponine asks. There's still not much emotion in her voice, but it's been a horrible morning, and she has her siblings again. “You want to call the police? After all of this?”

Combeferre thinks of what Courfeyrac would do, and then thinks about how soon he could see Courfeyrac and has to take a deep breath. “I know how this can work. You just have to trust me for a few minutes and stick to the story.”

“Trust you,” says Éponine, turning the words over, and then she takes her brother's hand. “Lead the way.”

*

Enjolras is the first to reach him, and he looks as wrecked as Combeferre feels. The aftermath of horror is, he's discovering, almost as bad as the horror itself. Dissolving a car stretched his powers to their limits, and he and Éponine and her siblings are all horrified, in shock, telling the same stories over and over to a hundred different horrified people, police and social workers and special task forces. They escaped, they all say time and again. Éponine mastered her powers just as the men were arriving, and Gavroche and Combeferre got them out. Their parents and the men must have fled, knowing they were calling the police. They don't know where they could have gone.

And now Enjolras and Courfeyrac are here, because Combeferre begged to call them somewhere in the middle of the chaos and someone actually listened.

He would have thought, if he'd thought about it, that Enjolras would be stone-faced and stoic and Courfeyrac boiling over with anger and tears and joy when they managed to reunite. Instead, Enjolras is crying and pale like he hasn't slept, smiling through his tears and holding on so tight that Combeferre's ribs, bruised from the fight, smart. Courfeyrac, behind him, is standing with his hands in his pockets, almost vibrating with tension but blank-faced.

“Everyone was so worried,” Enjolras says, choked, and it's a balm. “The police wouldn't say much on the phone, just that you've had a difficult time, and if _you_ couldn't get out—” He stops himself abruptly, maybe wondering if the police know exactly what Combeferre can do. “ _I_ was so worried. And everyone wants to see you as soon as you're ready.”

“I want to see them too. I've been thinking about you all.” He reaches out for Courfeyrac, and in a flurry of movement he's there too, holding on so tight it makes Combeferre's ribs protest again.

“We were looking for you,” Courfeyrac whispers, and Combeferre holds on as tight as he can in return.

It takes five minutes before he remembers Éponine and her siblings, waiting in the next room while someone tries to sort out somewhere safe for them to stay for the night. “I need to introduce you to someone. It's a long story, but she's the reason I couldn't get away before, and she and her siblings—her parents were the ones holding us. I want to help her, any way we can.”

“Of course.” Enjolras pulls away, somewhat steadier, back in the planning mode that Combeferre is used to. “How many? Do they need somewhere to stay? If they all want to be together, it could be difficult, but we'll figure it out.”

Combeferre loves his friends, who will take in Éponine and Azelma and Gavroche with no hesitation and with all the generosity they can manage, just on Combeferre's word. “They're trying to figure out where to put them, but if we have enough spare rooms even for a few days, it would help.”

“I'll put out the call,” says Courfeyrac. “I think Cosette's father has some extra rooms and he might still be foster certified after taking her in.”

It's a comfort to let other people handle things, and Combeferre relaxes into it. “Thank you. I have so much to tell you, not here, but meeting them has to come first.”

Neither of them lets him go completely when they leave the room. Courfeyrac's arm settles around his shoulders, and Enjolras holds his hand, and they're a little ungainly as they check in with the officer standing outside the room where Éponine and her siblings are, but Combeferre is relieved about the contact anyway.

When the door opens, Éponine is on her feet immediately, and Combeferre loses track of the molecules of the world for a moment until she realizes it's him and, apparently, lifts her powers. Now that she can control her power, the control is impressive. He suspects it will only get more so. Azelma and Gavroche are behind her, both of them wary of the strangers and of Combeferre too.

“These are my best friends,” he says, and it feels inadequate. “We might be able to find you all a place to stay together for a little while, until you can figure out what you want to do.” He turns to Courfeyrac and Enjolras. “And this is Éponine. She saved my life.”

Éponine frowns like she's thinking of objecting to that, but she steps forward anyway. Azelma and Gavroche both relax a little, enough to sit down, though they're perching on the edges of their seats. “And he saved mine,” she says. “Come in and sit down.”

*

Combeferre means to let her have her space. He goes home with Enjolras to their apartment, and Courfeyrac comes with them, unwilling to let Combeferre out of his sight, or so he says. Both of them promise that he can see everyone else tomorrow, and tell him all about the texts they've been getting since Combeferre called from the police station.

It's a terrible evening, as glad as he is to be back in the world, back with his friends. He forces himself through the story of the whole week, from being taken on the street to Éponine's powers to what he did, killing people and getting rid of their bodies without a blink. Enjolras and Courfeyrac hold on to him the whole time, tell him a hundred times that he did the only thing there was to do, but the guilt is building up in his stomach, and he knows it will take some time to work through it.

Courfeyrac falls asleep first, tears drying on his face, on Combeferre's bed, which is biggest and probably going to hold all of them tonight. Combeferre is sitting on the edge of it, and already imagining the feeling of a real mattress under him when sleep finally comes. Enjolras, sitting in the desk chair, looks in the faint light like a grieving angel on a tomb, carved from stone and too sad to speak. “I need to call a therapist tomorrow, as soon as I have a phone,” Combeferre admits. “I might not be able to tell them everything, but I can tell them enough to have it help.”

“You do.” Enjolras moves just enough to meet Combeferre's eyes. “I'm never going to blame you or judge you for any of this.”

“I know. It had to be done. And you would have done the same thing.”

“I hope so,” says Enjolras, and then on the heels of it, like it follows, “Do you want to call her? I saw that she gave you her number, and I'll lend you my phone.”

Combeferre really does. He was in the same room as Éponine for most of a week, all of it intense and dangerous and terrifying. He knows enough to know that of course he's feeling a bond, and that probably she is as well. He'll have to ease himself out of it, but it's been a long day. He wants to indulge. “Please. If you don't mind.”

“I was well into the bargaining stage of grief by the time you called,” Enjolras says, standing up and giving Combeferre his phone. Courfeyrac grunts when Combeferre stands up, and Enjolras takes his place easily, making sure Courfeyrac isn't left alone. They've all been through hell this week. “Lending you a phone is the least I could do, honestly. I was promising other things.”

“I'd have expected you to get stuck on anger.”

Enjolras's mouth lifts in something akin to a smile. “It was very angry bargaining.” He grabs Combeferre's hand and squeezes it once before letting go. “Go. She'll be worrying too.”

Denying it would do Éponine a disservice, so Combeferre just nods and goes out to the living room. It's ripped apart, either from temper or because Enjolras was searching for clues, ways to find Combeferre. They'll have to clean it up, and he'll have a hundred other things to do tomorrow. He doesn't let himself make a list yet, just takes Éponine's number out of his pocket and dials it.

She picks up on the third ring. “Who is it?”

“It's me.”

Her sigh of relief makes him relax. “Fucking social services has been calling me all night. Valjean is helping me sort through it, but it's all … God, this day will never end.”

“How is it going, there? Azelma and Gavroche?”

“I don't know. They're not really talking. Valjean made dinner.”

“And how is he?” It came out somehow, when they were talking about it, that Cosette lived with Éponine's family when they were young, might have been one of the first people they victimized, and Éponine almost refused to stay with Valjean, but they talked alone together and he convinced her. Combeferre can only hope that it's not too awkward and they can fix it.

“He's … nice, I think. Your friends?”

“I've only seen two of them so far, the ones you met. I'll see the rest tomorrow, probably, in between finding a new phone and finding a therapist specializing in supers and trauma. And, I hope, seeing you. I want to help you get settled as much as I can.”

“You're too fucking nice. Anyone else would be running the other way.”

Combeferre doesn't know how to respond to that. He feels like they're on opposite ends of the attic again, like she's too wary to let him near her. “If you want me to leave you alone so you can try to forget it, I will. You deserve to forget if you want to.”

“Don't be an asshole,” she snaps. “Come over here tomorrow, okay? Let me know when you can, and I'll be here.”

“Okay.” Combeferre takes a deep breath. Oxygen. He's out of Éponine's range, and even if he weren't, she won't take his powers away from him again unless there's an emergency. He trusts her kindness and, now, her control. “Afternoon, probably. I would offer to come alone, but I think I'm going to be chaperoned everywhere I go for a month.”

“Just means people care, from what I can tell.” Combeferre winces. Éponine doesn't have anyone but her brother and sister, as far as he can tell. And him, but that's complicated. They're going to have to see what they are to each other outside of that attic, and that's going to take time, and support systems for both of them. “Azelma has already said that I'm not going anywhere without three ways of getting in contact ever again.”

At least they have each other. “We'll talk about plans tomorrow. I just wanted to check in tonight, and make sure you're okay.”

“Yeah. I think I am. What about you?”

Better now that he's talked to her, but Combeferre doesn't think she'll appreciate hearing that. “Okay for now, anyway.”

Éponine sighs, and he thinks he hears someone talking to her in the background of the phone call. “That's the best any of us are going to do for a while.”

They say goodnight after that, and Combeferre doesn't like how uneasy he feels, cut off from her presence, but he goes back to his room and finds Enjolras awake, on the bed next to Courfeyrac. “Everything okay?” Enjolras asks.

“It will be,” says Combeferre, and gets into bed.

*

_Three Months Later_

“You don't need to use the code,” Éponine says when she opens the door to her apartment. “You texted that you were coming up.”

Combeferre shrugs, and doesn't mention that every time he knocks without using the rhythm he's noticed the Thénardier siblings using amongst themselves that his powers flicker out until she sees him through the peephole, whether he texts or not. “Good practice. And I think the kids like it.” He looks behind her, but the kitchen table is empty of anyone working on homework or squabbling over video games. “Where are they?”

“Gav is stuffing envelopes for Valjean for some spare cash. Azelma is at therapy and told me to fuck off and that she doesn't need an escort.” She gestures him in. “I was glad when you texted. Haven't been here by myself much.”

She's been in the apartment for three weeks, and as he looks around, it looks like she's finished unpacking everything, or more likely that Azelma has, since Éponine is working every hour she can manage. It's small, but it's not the house they grew up in, and she's seemed happier since she's been living in it instead of Valjean's house. “I can stay for dinner if you like, then.”

“If you don't have other plans.”

“No. I'll just let Enjolras know I won't be home for dinner, and I think he'll be relieved. He never wants to let me out of his sight, but he likes having time to himself too.”

Éponine snorts, but she invites him in and asks about what he's been doing in the few days since he visited, and they fall into the rhythm of conversation. It comes a little easier every time they see each other, and Combeferre relaxes into it. Éponine takes out ingredients to cook with eventually, and he helps her, another easy rhythm.

Something is on her mind, though. She's never exactly talkative, but she lets him hold up the conversation more than she usually does, and he catches her watching him a few times. “Is something wrong?” he asks when dinner is on the table and they're sitting down.

“No.” For a minute, he thinks that's all he's going to get, but then she sighs and continues. “Why are we waiting?”

Combeferre pauses, frowns. “For what?”

“Each other. I get why we couldn't at first, there was too much fucked up between us, but now … I feel safe with you. That matters a lot these days.”

His heart is beating faster than he'd like, excitement or panic or some combination of all of it. It's a conversation he's been avoiding for weeks, with her and with Courfeyrac and Jehan and Cosette, everyone who keeps gently trying to ask what he and Éponine are to each other and why they aren't more when he so clearly has feelings for her. “That worries me. I don't want to be with you just because you feel safe with me.”

Éponine shakes her head, scowling. “I feel safe with you, but I don't feel safe _because_ of you. Fuck you, by the way. I know my own feelings. This isn't Stockholm Syndrome shit or anything like that. But I trust you more than I trust anyone else, and if we're waiting, I want to stop. I've got my own place, I'm getting my life together. I'm ready if you are.”

Combeferre's head is spinning by the end of that, and he takes a few seconds to sort out his response. He's wanted it for a while—since the attic, when he's being honest, but he hates that thought—but it's hard to know if it will ever be the right time. Especially with the way they started. “I'm sorry for trying to push this off on your feelings. I know that I'd feel like this even if I'd met you a different way. I shouldn't assume different about you.”

“We're going to be complicated,” she says, relaxing now that he's admitted that much. “No matter what. The way we met, my parents … you killing them. It's going to have problems. But I don't really care.”

Combeferre cares, but he also knows what she means when she says she doesn't. Their lives are intertwined, and they know each other in ways that no one else really can. That's going to help in some ways, and hurt in others. Mostly, he thinks, they've had enough time that it will help. Maybe that's why she's saying this now. “I can handle complicated,” he says. “Especially if it means being with you.”

Éponine kisses him like it's something she's been waiting for and she has to jump into the middle. Combeferre is clumsy, waiting to catch up, but it only takes a moment. The rhythm of this is easy, like the rhythm of conversation, of cooking, of fighting, though he only has one memory of that and hopes never to have any others. When the kiss ends, Éponine smiles at him. “Azelma is going to be happy. She asked me about it first the week after we left.”

“Courfeyrac too,” he admits. “But I told him I wanted to wait to be sure.”

“And you're sure?” Somehow, even after a kiss, it's an honest question.

“I feel safe with you,” he says, repeating her words, and kisses her again. It's the only answer he has, and from the way she kisses him back, it's all the answer she wants.


End file.
